Category Archives: Popular Science

As many of you are probably aware, there will be an eclipse of the Sun on Friday 20th March, in the morning.

For those of us not lucky enough to be in the Faroe Isles at the time, the eclipse will be partial, with the Moon covering 80+% of the Sun as viewed from Essex. Weather permitting it promises to be a spectacular event and the best eclipse seen from the UK since 1999.

We are planning a public eclipse viewing event at Great Notley Country Park to tie in with BBC Stargazing LIVE, which this year is focused on the eclipse.

The eclipse begins around 8.30am, and runs through until around 10.30am.

Unfortunatley SOLAR GLASSES ARE NOW SOLD OUT. Sorry!

We will, however, have solar telescopes out, and a limited number of glasses and viewing strips for you to borrow, so hopefully everyone will have a chance to see something, if the weather behaves!

We hope to see some of you there!

With grateful thanks to Great Notley Parish Council for their support!

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On the evening of Saturday 24th January, we will be at the Great Notley Country Park in Braintree for another of our public stargazing nights.

From 6pm to 9pm, NEAS will be at the park with a selection of telescopes set up for you to look through.

If the skies are clear you’ll be able to observe the planet Jupiter and some deep-sky objects and we will be happy to answer any questions you might have, and give advice about how to start out with astronomy.

Everyone is welcome to come along and view through our telescopes. The night is free of charge. Please park in the site’s public car park (there may be a site car parking fee) which will remain open until 9pm. Details of how to find the site are on our Stargazing page here.

We will be set up behind the Discovery Centre building, so just follow the walkway round to find us. Please try to keep torches pointed toward the ground (to preserve people’s dark adaption).

Please be aware that we are dependent on clear weather. If it is cloudy you obviously may not get to see anything! And if it’s really raining we will likely call off the event – so please use common sense before setting out. We will still have a couple of members on site in case you have any questions.

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Update 20/12: Current forecast is partially clear, 50% and clearing further later in the evening. Some of us are hoping to be there just before 5.30pm to catch a pass of the ISS at 5.32pm.

On the evening of Saturday 20th December, we will be at the Great Notley Country Park in Braintree for another of our public stargazing nights.

From 6pm to 9pm, NEAS will be at the park with a selection of telescopes set up for you to look through.

If the skies are clear you’ll be able to observe some deep-sky objects and we will be happy to answer any questions you might have, and give advice about how to start out with astronomy.

Everyone is welcome to come along and view through our telescopes. The night is free of charge. Please park in the site’s public car park (there may be a site car parking fee) which will remain open until 9pm. Details of how to find the site are on our Stargazing page here.

We will be set up behind the Discovery Centre building, so just follow the walkway round to find us. Please try to keep torches pointed toward the ground (to preserve people’s dark adaption).

Please be aware that we are dependent on clear weather. If it is cloudy you obviously may not get to see anything! And if it’s really raining we will likely call off the event – so please use common sense before setting out. We will still have a couple of members on site in case you have any questions.

On the evening of Saturday 25th October, we will be at the Great Notley Country Park in Braintree for another of our public stargazing nights.

From 6pm to 9pm, NEAS will be at the park with a selection of telescopes set up for you to look through.

If the skies are clear you’ll be able to observe some deep-sky objects and we will be happy to answer any questions you might have, and give advice about how to start out with astronomy.

Everyone is welcome to come along and view through our telescopes. The night is free of charge. Please park in the site’s public car park (there may be a site car parking fee) which will remain open until 9pm. Details of how to find the site are on our Stargazing page here.

We will be set up behind the Discovery Centre building, so just follow the walkway round to find us. Please try to keep torches pointed toward the ground (to preserve people’s dark adaption).

Please be aware that we are dependent on clear weather. If it is cloudy you obviously may not get to see anything! And if it’s really raining we will likely call off the event – so please use common sense before setting out. We will still have a couple of members on site in case you have any questions.

This month Jerry Workman will be talking about “Comets in our Solar System”.

The public meeting takes place at the Henry Dixon Hall, Rivenhall End on Wednesday 21st May. Doors open at 7.30pm for an 8pm start. £2 for members, £3 for non-members. For further information, see the Events page.

Update 27 Sept 5pm. The current forecast is for high percentage cloud so viewing is likely to be limited.

On the evening of Saturday 27th September, we will be at the Great Notley Country Park in Braintree for another of our public stargazing nights.

From 6pm to 9pm, NEAS will be at the park with a selection of telescopes set up for you to look through.

If the skies are clear you’ll be able to observe some deep-sky objects and we will be happy to answer any questions you might have, and give advice about how to start out with astronomy.

Everyone is welcome to come along and view through our telescopes. The night is free of charge. Please park in the site’s public car park (there may be a site car parking fee) which will remain open until 9pm. Details of how to find the site are on our Stargazing page here.

We will be set up behind the Discovery Centre building, so just follow the walkway round to find us. Please try to keep torches pointed toward the ground (to preserve people’s dark adaption).

Please be aware that we are dependent on clear weather. If it is cloudy you obviously may not get to see anything! And if it’s really raining we will likely call off the event – so please use common sense before setting out. We will still have a couple of members on site in case you have any questions.

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Mars and Saturn remain fairly well placed for most of July in the late evening skies, but rather low in the South West. By months end Mars is setting at 11pm. The 2 planets close on each other along our line of sight so that by the end of July they are about 14 degrees apart and almost exactly the same brightness. The other bright planets are all close to the Sun in the sky and so are difficult to see.

We are all familiar with the bright planets which along with the Sun form the main bodies of our Solar System. But in recent decades more powerful telescopes, search programmes and improved techniques have revealed that our system, and probably most other star systems in our galaxy, also contain a veritable menagerie of smaller objects in huge numbers. The main groups are asteroids, comets, dwarf planets, and larger icy bodies, as well as dust and debris belts. Then there are the large families of moons around the largest 4 planets.

The old text book strict dividing lines between these families have broken down to an extent. Some objects classed as asteroids can display cometary activity. Some of the moons of the planets are captured asteroids. Ganymede is classed as a moon, but is larger than Mercury. So is Titan – and it has a dense atmosphere and planetary weather. Would Enceladus be classed as a comet if it were in a free orbit around the Sun ?

Perhaps we need a new classification that takes more account of factors including composition and size.

Hubble Space Telescope images of Ceres helped scientists determine it was unique from other objects in the asteroid belt.

Throughout July, two of the largest such objects in the Solar System, Ceres and Vesta, will be very close together in the sky. On July 5th they are about a sixth of one degree apart – for comparison that is about a third the width of the Full Moon. This unusually close approach will be visible in binoculars, as will the movement of the two bodies relative to each other as the month progresses. The area to look at is in Virgo, just above Mars and the best time is after 11pm BST in the first half of the month. On July 5th, Ceres is mag +7.6, Vesta is mag +6..3 and the pair are 1.5 degrees South West of zeta Virginis. If you have zeta in your binocular field of view, you will have Ceres and Vesta too. Ceres is currently classed as a dwarf planet and is about 1,000 km in diameter.

Vesta is about half that diameter and is classed as an asteroid.

Full Moon this month is on the 12th, meaning that the second half of the month will be best for dark skies, helped by the end of the all night summer twilight on July 23rd. By the end of the month there is a 2 hour window of dark skies from mid-Essex. Late July is also a good time of year to watch for meteors. There will be several known showers active, each of them producing modest numbers of meteors, but together increasing the chance of seeing some activity.

The first quarter Moon will be just 2 degrees from Mars on the evening of the 5th July and 3 degrees from Saturn on the 7th, both approaches best seen at about 11pm.

The Milky Way will be ideally placed to be seen in late July from areas away from streetlights. At midnight the subtle glow of billions of stars at great distance from us can be traced out running from overhead in Cygnus down towards the South.

NEAS will be holding a public Solar Observing day at Great Notley on Saturday 21st June, beginning at 12pm midday and running through until around 3pm. This observing session is open to everyone, so please do come along and take a look at our nearest star through specialist solar telescopes. There is no charge (but there may be a site parking fee). We set up in the field behind the main building, a short walk from the public car park. Please park in the public car park.

Please note that observing is weather dependent. If it is cloudy, you may not get to see anything, and if it is raining we will call the event off. If it is cloudy we will have members on site to answer any questions you might have about astronomy.

NEVER look at the Sun with any telescope or binoculars without specialist equipment. Permanent eye damage will result.

For more information about Great Notley Country Park and how to get there, click here.

The public meeting takes place at the Henry Dixon Hall, Rivenhall End on Wednesday 21st May. Doors open at 7.30pm for an 8pm start. £2 for members, £3 for non-members. For further information, see the Events page.

The Summer Solstice takes place on June 21st just before local noon. The Sun will beam down from an altitude of nearly 62 degrees, its highest point in the sky for the whole year. The North Pole of the Earth’s axis faces towards the Sun and everywhere within the Arctic Circle has 24 hours of daylight.

The changing seasons that follow the annual cycle of the Sun’s height in the sky are pronounced at our latitude and are of course due to the fact that the Earth’s axis is tilted by 23 degrees. A smaller tilt would mean less seasonal variation and a larger tilt more extreme variations. Fortunately the Earth’s tilt is fairly stable, but our near neighbour Mars is less fortunate. Its tilt is currently similar to Earths at 25 degrees, but it can swing wildly away from this over periods of millions of years. The difference is that we have a large Moon which helps stabilise our tilt whereas Mars only has 2 tiny satellites which do not.

Jupiter finally departs the evening skies in early June and might be seen early in the month very low down in the North Western twilight.

Mars remains in Virgo and continues to fade throughout the month as its distance from Earth increases, though it remains a fairly bright object visible all evening and will be edging towards the bright star Spica as the month progresses. By the end of June the disc diameter of Mars drops below 10 arc seconds.

Also in Virgo are Ceres and Vesta, about 2.5 degrees apart at the start of the month but less than 0.5 degrees apart by months end and on their way to a close approach of just 10 arc minutes on July 5th. Having mapped Vesta, the NASA DAWN mission will arrive at Ceres in 2015. It will be a bonanza year for fans of small icy worlds as the NASA New Horizons mission will be at Pluto in July 2015.

In mid-month Saturn is in the South during the late evenings and rather low down. This is a good time to have a look for Antares which is in the same area of the sky. Antares is the brightest star in the Southern constellation of Scorpius and is a red supergiant that will one day explode as a supernova. It is an enormous star, even larger than Betelguese and with a total radiation output over the electromagnetic spectrum around 60,000 times greater than the Sun. At 11.30 pm mid-month Antares is due South, just over 20 degrees to the left of, and below, Saturn. Scorpius is one of the finest constellations in the entire sky and can be fully seen from countries further South such as France, but from Essex is truncated by the horizon and it needs a clear transparent night to see some of the stars in the constellation. To the left (East) of Scorpius is Sagittarius, where we are looking towards the centre of our Milky Way galaxy.

The Moon makes close passes in the sky of several of the planets this month – just a few degrees from Mars on the evening of the 7th and again a few degrees from Saturn on the evening of the 10th. Full Moon is on the night of the 12th/13th. During this short summer night the Moon will only reach 18 degrees above the horizon.

Late June brings both the longest evenings of the year and often the best chances of observing noctilucent clouds. The first NLC were seen this year on May 24th by the NASA AIM satellite. One of the best times to try to see them is between 10.30 pm and 11 pm, looking towards the North West and low down – so a clear horizon is required. The clouds vary between looking like cirrus clouds faintly lit, to bright bluish complexes of streaks and swirls. At the extreme height these clouds form, the atmosphere is very thin and well below minus 100 C, something to consider when viewing them on a warm summer evening !

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